As I was downloading my sample ballot and poking around the web for information about local issues and candidates (because that’s what good citizens do), I was struck by the profound sense of pain, fear, and sorrow I felt.

The feelings were so overwhelming I found myself, once again this election cycle, silently weeping. And praying that God would touch people’s hearts and minds with a measure of grace and decency.

How have we come to this? How have we gotten so far from our ideals and founding beliefs? How have we gotten so evil?

In a few days the ballots will be counted, and we’ll know if we’ve embraced that evil or rejected it. In a few days the future direction of our country will be set.

At this point, I can only repeat the brilliant words of Leon Wieseltier from his appearance on The Colbert Report:

“A democratic society, an open society, places an extraordinary intellectual responsibility on ordinary men and women, because we are governed by what we think, we are governed by our opinions. So the content of our opinions, and the quality of our opinions, and the quality of the formation of our opinions, basically determines the character of our society.”

He went on to say:

“And that means that in a democratic society, in an open society, a thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy.”

And, truly, that says it all. I can’t say it better or add to that.

So I won’t.

This November 8th, be sure to vote.

And, please… vote for decency. On just that count, the choice is clear.

What a sad and pathetic group of ape-descendants we turned out to be. After the Dark Ages, the human race had high and lofty aspirations. We saw ourselves so vastly evolved from our animal origins. We had the power of nuanced communicative language, of higher thought and rationality, of powerful evocative art, music, and literature.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the human experiment is a fail. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is that “intelligent” species actually aren’t intelligent enough. All our technical toys turn out to be exactly like giving an ape dynamite and a lighter.

And after several thousand years thinking we’re better than animals, we prove we’re not by making this election cycle about penises.

I am not a fan of the trend of sports or news casters set up in a public place with a background of passersby. I think they’re noisy, distracting, and gimmicky. They also tend to bring out ape-like behavior on those in the background. Both CNN and MSNBC have done this for major campaign events, in particular the debates.

Onlookers have used the ability to “get on TV” to display various signs advertising their political or social views. During the third debate, at UNLV, I got a kick out of a sign someone had made about “Daef people”…

I wasn’t sure who “Daef people” were, but apparently they need equal access (to something; couldn’t tell at this point).

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Obviously, the sign maker meant deaf people, and as someone born with a serious hearing deficit (and who is progressively becoming deaf in my older age), I certainly sympathize with the cause.

But I am going to mock someone who apparently cares a great deal about an issue, but [a] not their spelling of the key word of that issue, or [2] their own precision in putting forth their point.

If you can’t even spell the key word of your issue, why should I take you seriously?

Apparently someone clued them in at some point, and they tried to correct the sign:

And now we can sort of see what deaf people need access to: Jobs.

I guess they ran out of ink in their Sharpie to fill in the lower words or do a good correction to the all-important key word.

Why am I picking on someone trying to make a good point (and a point I support)?

Cause [1] I’m an asshole (never denied that), and [b] I’m so god-damned sick and tired of living in a world filled with wall-to-wall fuckups and half-assary. How is it even possible for someone to misspell the central word of their whole deal?

Gives us daef people a bad name, it does. (One might think that text would be all the more cherished by those who can’t hear speech.)

What do you do when you realize that society is an insane asylum and the inmates are the keepers? If reasonable people were running the place, maybe there would be some hope, but as it is we seem to be gleefully accelerating straight towards a cliff. One maniac in particular seems to be stomping on the gas pedal and no one seems able to grab the wheel.

How do we navigate a world so out of touch with the rational (let alone the truthful)? Our collective heads are so far up the collective asses of our brand loyalties that all conversation is muffled by all the shit in our mouths. There is no real dialog, let alone a dialectic.

When you elect for the highest office in the land a feces-flinging “damned dirty ape” (as Charlton Heston famously said), you really can’t be all that surprised when he shits all over your political process. What did you expect would happen?

What depresses, nauseates, and outrages me is what it seems to have taken (and who knows if even this is enough). As final straws go, the business of the Orange Goblin claiming (and, indeed, very possibly truthfully) that he cops feels and steals kisses with impunity pales in comparison to the sheer evil he embodies.

Once again we demonstrate that the big picture is beyond us; it’s the little things that capture our attention.

When it comes to doctors (or nurses), lawyers, airplane pilots, the people who prepare and serve us food, the people who design and build our houses, the people who design and build our TV, cars, or cell phones, we naturally expect them to be well-trained and very good at what they do.

Of course we do. We avail ourselves to these things because we trust the experience and ability of those workers to do their job reliably, accurately, and correctly.

So why is it that, when it comes to politics, so many are so unwilling to listen to those who clearly know what they’re talking about?

Recently I wrote about Weltschmerz, a German word that translates, essentially, as “world hurt.” Although that word has been around a while and describes a general feeling, it seems especially appropriate in this election cycle. Many, for their own reasons, feel a sharp dissonance between ought and is these days.

This past week, since Monday night, a different, perhaps more well-known, German word has been running through my mind: Schadenfreude. It describes the pleasure one can feel over the misery of another — a feeling that isn’t very nice. Decent people reserve it for people who aren’t nice having a bad day.

This post’s well-known title could apply to my Minnesota Twins (who lost their 100th game yesterday), but even someone who’s been a close observer only six years knows better than to have great expectations of the team these days.

It might also apply to the pending NASA news conference about Europa. Many of us are hoping for something along the lines of a mysterious monolith and staying away, but rumor has it that the Hubble telescope spotted the long-absent water geysers. (They were observed years ago, but never since.) ((Update:The rumors were correct!))

But, while those are expectations, considering what’s taking over about a dozen TV networks tonight — what’s been long awaited by so many — the post’s title absolutely refers to the first Presidential debate.